Wipe Israel off the map, says Iranian leader
Europe’s leading countries - Britain, France and Germany - have invested a great deal of diplomatic energy discussing with Iran exactly how that country can fulfill its nuclear ambitions in a peaceful manner. The talks were a complete failure, of course, and merely allowed Iran to press ahead anyway while securing attractive bribes from the West. The reality is that Iran remains hostile to the West in general and to Israel in particular:
Anyone who signs a treaty which recognises the entity of Israel means he has signed the surrender of the Muslim world Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Mr Ahmadinejad made his comments at a conference in Tehran entitled The World without Zionism, the official Irna news agency reported.
Western governments are bound to see it as further proof that Iran’s hardline president is disinclined to curb his country’s controversial nuclear programme, the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall says.
They may hope that a co-ordinated diplomatic protest will help step up the pressure, she says.
Ahmadinejad is suspected of being one of the ringleaders who seized over 50 American hostages in Tehran in 1979. But his comments are not the idle musings of a former militant; rather, they reflect well-established Iranian policy, seemingly untouched by the diplomatic efforts of Europe’s ‘Big Three’:
Mr Ahmadinejad told some 3,000 students in Tehran that Israel’s establishment was "a move by the world oppressor (the West) against the Islamic world".
Referring to Iran’s late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."
This is not believed to be the first time a senior Iranian leader has made such comments. In 2001, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani called for a Muslim state to annihilate Israel with a nuclear strike.
Such calls are though regular slogans at anti-Israeli or anti-US rallies.
Mr Ahmadinejad warned leaders of Muslim nations who recognised the state of Israel that they "face the wrath of their own people".
He added: "Anyone who signs a treaty which recognises the entity of Israel means he has signed the surrender of the Muslim world."
Meanwhile, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Authority who has strenuously avoided any steps that would lead to Iran facing the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme, has recently received the Nobel Peace Prize.
